In the manufacture of so-called wafers, i.e. silicon wafers, as initial products for the manufacture of electronic storage components, these wafers are hold at a distance in the workpiece carrier and are subject to a chemical treatment in a chemical active bath, this can be an acid or also a caustic solution. Subsequent to this bath they are transferred to an quenching bath for rinsing. The transfer must be carried out very quickly, since with a slow transfer rinsing droplets of the fluid can be formed on the surface of the silicon wafers, the droplets causing irregular chemical reactions, higher capture of particles and oxidations.
For the solution of this problem a transport device has already become known, the pivot arms of which convey the workpiece carrier from the obliquely downwards inclined position, in which they hold the workpiece carrier in the container for the chemical active bath, into the container for the quenching bath by means of a pivot movement upwards and then downwards over a total angle of approximately 270.degree.. The required period of time is too long, since the distance to be covered is too large. Furthermore the centrifugal forces acting onto the workpieces are very high.
Furthermore it has become known for the solution of the same problem, to arrange a vertically moveable sliding carriage laterally to the containers, a pivot arm formed as a parallel control arm being arranged pivotably around a vertical axis on the sliding carriage, on the free end of the pivot arm a workpiece carrier being able to be hold by a pneumatic suction docking. The workpiece carrier is transferred by an upward movement of the sliding carriage, by a pivot movement of the pivot arm and by a downward movement of the sliding carriage. Apart from the high requirement of time it is disadvantageous in this case that clean-room conditions cannot be adhered to, which have to be observed in the manufacture of silicon wafers. Furthermore the sliding carriage and the guide bars must be made of stainless high-quality steel, which involves in turn the risk of metal abrasion. Metal abrasion, however, is especially harmful in the manufacture of such silicon wafers.
A further solution is that a vertical sliding carriage with carrier arms is provided, on which the workpiece carrier is arranged. This sliding carriage is moved upwards by conveying the workpiece carrier and then a collecting basin is immediately moved between the container for the active bath and the workpiece carrier, the basin collecting rinsing water arriving from above from a flood device on the workpieces. Subsequently the vertical sliding carriage is displaced horizontally and is lowered. The flood rinsing does not guarantee a uniform rinsing of the workpiece surface; therefore the long period of time until the immersion into an immersion rinsing bath is disadvantageous.